Comments on: Different colors, living side by side for just $239,900 in Santa Rosa

By: nomadic

nomadic — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:49:16 +0000

Duet = fancy name for duplex

A long ago former boss had one in god-forsaken Toledo, OH. I think it was brand new when he bought it, but I still wonder what he was thinking. (He had changed jobs when I worked for him and had the added loveliness of a 50-60 mile commute each way.) It took him FOREVER to sell it.

By: bob

bob — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:02:41 +0000

half the house? What the hell? So- you’d better not make too much noise or the “neighbors” will raise a fuss. No thanks.

By: sonarrat

sonarrat — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:57:03 +0000

Bob: You get half the house. The other half is 2229. It’s really not much different from buying a townhouse.

By: madhaus

madhaus — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:00:46 +0000

I first heard the term “duet home” used to show crap housing in Tom Wolfe’s book, A Man in Full. This dude who had the run of the most awful luck lived in one in some dump like Pittsburg or Antioch or something. He could hear the neighbors screaming at each other through the wall at all hours.

…Wolfe’s segue to the book’s other main character, Conrad Hensley, a young laborer working for Croker Global Foods in San Francisco. Conrad dreams of someday buying a condo for his family in a decent neighborhood, far away from the housing they share with noisy neighbors, most of whom are immigrants, including those living in the other half of their double house, or “duet”:

“In the two days since the family moved in, Conrad had never laid eyes on any of them, and there seemed to be an absolute mob in there, too. Asians — Cambodians, Laotians, Thais, Vietnamese, Koreans, Sikhs — were moving in all over the duets. Eight or ten would pile into a single tiny apartment.”

and here’s all I could Google out of the actual book, p 175.:

They were living in a duet, a form of cheap housing Conrad had never heard of
before he and Jill moved in a year ago… Duets were rows of small one-storey houses, about twelve feet apart with patchy little strips of yard between them. In each house a wall ran right down the middle, the long way, dividing it into two narrow apartments.

Conrad’s unrealized dream is to buy an actual condo for his family instead of renting the duet.

By: rick

rick — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:08:10 +0000

Haha, this is a very funny post. The neighbors probably hate each other.

By: bob

bob — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:44:56 +0000

So is half the house for sale or do you get a dual-colored house? Sort of confusing. Anyhow, Santa Rosa is actually kind of nice in some parts. But it’s faaarrr away from just about everything. Too far to be within the grasp of Bay Area commuters.